What a website actually costs
The agency quote, the freelancer, the builder, the domain and the renewals nobody mentions — with real numbers and no sales pitch first.
A real Clay site — built from a Google listing
You are holding a quote — two and a half thousand, maybe four — and there is no way to tell whether that is the going rate or somebody having a look at you. Almost nobody publishes these numbers, so here they are, line by line, including the lines that never appear on a quote at all.
A small-business website built by people costs about €1,500 in Europe: designer €700, developer €550, copywriter €250. That is a fair price for the work. What it does not cover is the year after it — the domain, the hosting, the tools, and somebody's hourly rate every time your opening hours change.
The three ways to get one
Most quotes for a small-business site land between €1,500 and €5,000. A freelancer working alone sits near the bottom, a studio with three people in it near the top, and the difference is rarely the code — it is how much of the thinking is done for you. The figure we publish is the BOTTOM of that range, €1,500: designer €700, developer €550, copywriter €250. Anybody who has actually asked has been quoted more, and a number chosen to shock takes the rest of a page down with it.
Ask which of those three you are paying for. A good number of small-business quotes are one developer fitting your logo to a template they have used before, priced as though a designer drew it. That is not dishonest, but you want to know it before you compare two totals.
The third route is building it yourself on a DIY builder — €15 to €30 a month for a business plan, plus a weekend of your own time. The weekend is the part everybody leaves out of the sum, and a day of your time has a price even when nobody invoices it.
The bill nobody quotes
A domain is €10 to €15 a year, and the renewal is usually dearer than the first year — a cheap first year is an offer, not a price. Hosting runs €5 to €25 a month. Then the subscriptions: something to hold the menu, something for the booking diary, an SEO plugin and an analytics tool.
And the expensive one is changes. Agencies bill them by the hour or wrap them in a retainer, so a new winter menu, a fourth photograph and the Sunday you decided to open are three invoices. Across a year that is routinely more than the build was.
A typical stack — hosting, changes, an SEO tool, analytics and the consent banner — comes to around €81 a month before anything specific to your trade.
And then the rebuild
Small-business sites get replaced every three to five years, and the second build costs close to what the first one did, because almost nothing carries across. The words might. The photographs might. The site does not.
The reason is nearly always the same and it is not fashion. Nobody at the business could change anything, so the site drifted out of date until replacing it was easier than correcting it. If you are holding a quote today, that is the risk worth pricing — not the design going stale.
Four things to ask before you sign
Who changes it
Ask what a new photograph costs and how long it takes. This one answer decides what the site costs you over five years.
Whose domain it is
It should be registered in your name at a registrar you can log into. A domain sitting in an agency's account is a hostage.
What happens if they stop
Ask where it is hosted and whether you could move it. “We host it for you” is fine right up until the studio closes.
What is not in the number
Photography, copywriting, the booking tool, the shop and every yearly renewal are usually separate. Get them listed, then compare.
What you get
Real sites, made with Clay
Open one. It is the live site in a frame, not a screenshot — so what you see is what it looks like right now.
Questions
Is €1,500 a fair price for a small business website?
For a designed site with real copywriting, yes — that is close to the European going rate and a studio charging it is not overcharging you. It is not a fair price for a template with your logo dropped into it. Ask to see two sites they built for businesses your size, and ask who wrote the words.
What is the cheapest a real website can be?
Free. Clay builds one from your Google listing and it is live at name.clay.site once you claim it with an email address and a password. It is not a trial and nothing expires. What free does not get you is your own domain, the badge off, or booking — those need Pro at €49 a month.
Why do agencies charge for every little change?
Because it is somebody's afternoon. A studio building you a bespoke site is not running a product with an editor in it, so changing your hours means a developer opening the project again. It is a real cost, honestly billed, and it is the main reason small-business sites go stale. Price five years of it, not the build.
What does a domain cost, really?
Ten to fifteen euros a year for a .com at most registrars, and the renewal is normally higher than the advertised first year. Buy it in your own name, never the agency's. On Clay a custom domain is a Pro feature and the free address keeps working afterwards: what free covers, and what it does not.
When is Clay the wrong answer?
When the site is the product — a members' area, a booking platform, something that talks to your till. No builder does those well. And if you need card payments on the page: our shop hands the order to WhatsApp or email and nothing is charged on the site — a real limit. For three pages that never change, a domain and cheap hosting beats our price.
What a website actually costs
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